Twitter Is ‘Thinking About’ Ecommerce, Says CEO

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo

We recently reported that Twitter appears to beis adding its own iTunes affiliate links to music previews on Twitter.com, as part of a way to make money by earning a five-percent commission from everything sold on iTunes via Twitter.

However, the iTunes affiliate program could be just the tip of the iceberg.

On Wednesday, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo told CNBC (via Mashable) that Twitter is thinking of ways to “participate” in commerce.

“It’s particularly interesting in areas where you’ve got things like perishable inventory, like tickets,” said Costolo after being asked about Twitter’s revenue plans. “We observe that and are paying attention to that, and are thinking about the kinds of ways we could participate in that value exchange.”

We just heard back from a Twitter spokeswoman about our theory that Twitter is already doing this with iTunes, and she said to expect an answer soon. In the meantime, it’s interesting that the thing he’s talking about could be already happening.

While Costolo didn’t offer much in the way of detail in the CNBC interview about how Twitter might approach Ecommerce, he has suggested in the past that there’s an opportunity for Twitter to make it easier for businesses to sell tickets and other limited-time items through tweets. Twitter could then potentially take a cut of these transactions.